1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for providing a user who wishes to purchase a certain product via a network with information about related products that can be combined with the above product when purchasing the same. The present invention is also concerned with a method for enable the user to acquire information about related products. Further, the present invention relates to a method for enable a registered user to register information about related products.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been an increased number of online shops from which users can purchase products via the Internet, and Web sites called online mall in which a plurality of online shops are gathered. On such Web sites, a user places a buy order by seeing a Web page that introduces products, choosing a product that he or she wants from among the introduced products, specifying the way of settling and personal information such as his/her address. The way of settlement may, for example, be a bank transfer, a credit card or electronic money.
Generally, the user who utilizes online sales service chooses a product that he or she wants from a list of products on a Web page and temporarily puts it in a shopping cart. This procedure is repeated until the user chooses all products that he or she wants. Then, the user places a buy order. It is generally said that 65% of the products that the user once chooses is cancelled until the user finally places the buy order. This shows that the user wavers in his/her choice of products during purchasing. It is therefore desired to provide means for assisting the user in purchasing. Such means is also important to online sales providers in terms of sales promotion.
Taking the above into consideration, there are some Web pages that present comments on products to the users. However, in practice, it is difficult to provide the users with valuable comments. There are also many Web sites that utilize an electronic bulletin board in which a variety of information about products can be written. However, there is no function of associating these Web sites with online shopping Web sites and providing the users with proper information. This fails to supply the user with useful information in shopping.
It is conceivable to employ a so-called cross sell in which products that could be bought in combination with a product that the user wants to buy are proposed so that the user can be stimulated to buy these products. For example, a peripheral device such as a printing machine could be combined with a personal computer that the user wants. A carry bag could be combined with a notebook type personal computer that the user wants. A guidebook could be combined with a computer software package. It is necessary to obtain information concerning products that can be combined with the original product. For example, a conventional online shop shows a product that was simultaneously bought together with the product that another user originally wanted to buy in the past. There is another method for collecting information by data mining for POS data or the like and analyzing the results of data mining. However, either of these methods makes it possible to extract information about only combinable products. In other words, these methods could not bring about tangible information concerning, for example, effect, usage and notes resulting from the combination of products. Thus, the conventional method could not greatly assist purchasing.